"You mean--?" quoth Arabella.

"Here's the driest stick that aver stood without sap."

Arabella flushed when she took the implication that she was looking on
the man as a husband. Adela heard the remarks, and flushed likewise.
Mrs. Chump eyed them both. "It's for the money o' the man," she
soliloquized aloud, as her fashion was. Adela jumped up, and with an
easy sprightly posture of her fair, commonly studious person, and natural
run of notes "Oh!" she cried, "I begin to feel what it is to be like a
live fish on the fire, frying, frying, frying! and if he can keep his
Christian sentiments under this infliction, what a wonderful hero he must
be! What a hot day!"

She moved swiftly to the door, and flung it open. A sight met her eyes
at which she lost her self-possession. She started back, uttering a soft
cry.

"Ah! aha! oh!" went the bitter ironic drawl of Mr. Pericles, whose sharp
glance had caught the scene as well.

Emilia came forward with a face like sunset. Diplomacy, under the form
of Wilfrid Pole, kicked its heels behind, and said a word or two in a
tone of false cheerfulness.

"Oh! so!" Mr. Pericles frowned, while Emilia held her hand out to him.
"Yeas! You are quite well? H'm! You are burnt like a bean--hein? I
shall ask you what you have been doing, by and by."

Happily for decency, Mrs. Chump had not participated in the fact